Experts offered to restore an obsidian horn fragment until it looked new. Rowan refused. Its worn surface recorded the journey better than any polished replacement could. Only a protective case was added, along with a label naming every ordinary person who had kept it safe. The object no longer belonged to secrecy. It became a record of survival and of the chain of small choices that finally defeated power.
Rowan kept an obsidian horn fragment in a plain case rather than turning it into a trophy. On the anniversary of the confrontation, the stranger returned to the exact place where the first insult had landed. There was no revenge speech. Rowan simply reminded the room that truth often arrives looking ordinary—and that cruelty reveals guilt long before evidence finishes proving it.